![\"Indian](\"https:\/\/apicms.thestar.com.my\/uploads\/images\/2025\/07\/30\/3442565.jpg\")
Indian author Kiran Desai, a Booker Prize winner, is also up for the award again with a long-awaited novel. Photo: AP<\/p>\nMalaysian author Tash Aw\u2019s\u00a0new book The South is among 13 semifinalists announced on Tuesday for the Booker Prize. The list features writers from nine countries across four continents.<\/p>\n
Raised in Malaysia and educated in England, Aw has won the Whitbread, Commonwealth and O. Henry Awards, with his work translated into over 20 languages.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo call The South a coming-of-age novel nearly misses its expanse. This is a story about heritage, the Asian financial crisis, and the relationship between one family and the land,\u201d noted the 2025 Booker Prize judges.<\/p>\n
Aw, who has been a Booker Prize\u00a0semifinalist twice before (with The Harmony Silk Factory and Five Star Billionaire), will be the first Malaysian winner if he takes the \u00a350,000 (RM283,000) prize for The South.<\/p>\n
Indian author\u00a0Kiran Desai,\u00a0who won the\u00a0Booker Prize\u00a0and then didn\u2019t publish a novel for almost two decades, is also up for the award again with her long-awaited follow-up.<\/p>\n
The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny,\u00a0the 677-page tale of two young Indians making their way in the United States, is Desai’s first novel since The Inheritance Of Loss, which won the Booker in 2006.<\/p>\n
Indian author Kiran Desai, a Booker Prize winner, is also up for the award again with a long-awaited novel. Photo: AP<\/p>\n
Two previous finalists are up for the prize again: British writer Andrew Miller, for The Land In Winter, and Hungarian-British writer David Szalay for Flesh.<\/p>\n
Five of the contenders are from Britain: Miller, Szalay, Natasha Brown (Universality), Jonathan Buckley (One Boat) and Benjamin Wood (Seascraper).<\/p>\n
Books by US writers in the running include Susan Choi\u2019s Flashlight, Katie Kitamura\u2019s Audition and Ben Markovits\u2019 The Rest Of Our Lives.<\/p>\n
Also on the list are Misinterpretation by Albanian-American Ledia Xhoga, Love Forms\u00a0by Trinidad\u2019s Claire Adam, and Endling, a debut novel by Canadian-Ukrainian opera librettist Maria Reva.<\/p>\n
“The 13 longlisted novels bring the reader to Hungary, Albania, the north of England, Malaysia, Ukraine, Korea, London, New York, Trinidad and Greece, India and the West Country,\u201d said Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, chair of a five-member judging panel that includes actor Sarah Jessica Parker.<\/p>\n
“All, somehow, examine identity, individual or national, and all, I think, are gripping and excellent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers\u2019 careers and is open to novels from any country published in Britain and Ireland. Last year\u2019s winner was Orbital, by British writer Samantha Harvey.<\/p>\n
A list of six finalists will be announced Sept 23, and this year\u2019s winner will be crowned on Nov 10 at a ceremony in London. – AP\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Malaysian author Tash Aw\u2019s\u00a0new book The South is among 13 semifinalists announced on Tuesday for the Booker Prize.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,13682,29769,457,134,935,29767,29768],"class_list":{"0":"post-31757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-author","11":"tag-booker-prize","12":"tag-books","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-malaysia","15":"tag-tash-aw","16":"tag-the-south"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}